


it's not so bad (and other times you feel you wake up dead)

by hidefromeveryone



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Anger Management, Anorexia, Dissociation, Exhaustion, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Flashbacks, Gen, Insomnia, Isolation, Mental Instability, Nightmares, Nonverbal Communication, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Destruction, Self-Hatred, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-04 05:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12162858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hidefromeveryone/pseuds/hidefromeveryone
Summary: "I'm so sorry. I guess, I have a bit of a temper, so...I don't know why I'm that way. Maybe I'm naturally untrusting because my mom left me, and so instead of accepting people into my life I push them away before they reject me. I guess I have some walls up."Keith has never had anyone truly care about him. Not in any way that counts. So, instead of letting people in - letting people help him - he deals with all of the ways that his minds tears him apart by himself.Well, maybe "dealing with it" is the wrong way to put it. He's cracking apart at the seams.





	1. it's a desert in my heart (and nowhere to hide)

**Author's Note:**

> what's up. i'm still a mess. nothing has changed there. 
> 
> everything wrote about in here comes from personal experience. i won't write about something that i don't have personal experience with, because i don't want to portray anything inaccurately. 
> 
> enjoy.

They were watching Star Wars under the stars, the old film projected onto the glass ceiling and shimmering with the thousands of twinkling lights hovering just outside of their reach. Pillows and blankets were strewn across the floor as the Paladins lied in their folds and pretend they were resting in the comforts of home rather than the foreign ship hurtling through thousands of miles of empty space. 

Pidge was tossing some of Hunk’s newly crafted space candy into his mouth, bursting into laughter every time one misses or hits him on the nose. Her legs were crossed and supporting her laptop, which was running a new program she’s had in the works for weeks. With every shake of her chest, it shifted a couple inches before threatening to fall. Somehow, she always managed to catch it before disaster could hit. 

Hunk was propped up a few feet away, his legs sprawled out in front of him and his hands supporting his upper body behind him as he maneuvered his torso to catch the various pieces of food thrown towards him. Earlier that evening, he had managed to fix the film projector he had built months ago and had excitedly run around the castle to inform the Paladins that their movie nights were back once more. 

Lance was resting on his makeshift throne of pillows, a face mask resting over his pores as he hummed along to the soundtrack of the film. A large smile was spread across his face, and every time gunfire occurred he would stop his humming in order to initiate the sound of the lasers as best he could. His legs were propped out in front of him, and were constantly moving as he shook with energy, his blue lion slippers bouncing on and off of his feet. 

Shiro was sitting off to the side, a blanket draped around his shoulders and a warm cup of tea in his hands that appeared to be a mix of chamomile and Earl Grey. His lips were tilted upwards in an expression of pure bliss as his eyes followed the characters of the film. His entire body was relaxed and resting, and the hardened look in his eyes had rounded out to something much softer the longer the movie had gone on. Occasionally, a piece of candy would roll over to him and he would pop it into his mouth without a second thought before sucking on it. 

Keith was sitting twenty feet away from the others, his legs drawn up towards his chest with his arms wrapped around them. His chin was resting on top of his knees as his eyes hovered unfocused on a spot of the ceiling several inches away from the edge of the screen. If prompted, he would have been unable to tell the others which episode of the sage they were watching, or just what was happening onscreen. His mind was swirling too fast to settle fully on any of the thoughts that arose, leaving him with only a vague sense of discomfort and panic as he focused all of his attention on breathing and remaining still. 

He feels like he shouldn’t be there, surrounded by four other people who so clearly are not only just friends, but a family. 

He is the outsider. The one who can’t calm down after battles, and spends the days afterwards pouncing on anyone who looks at him the wrong way with anger. The one who never understands any of their jokes or banter, and ends up being laughed at for hours when he asks questions about “simple” things that he doesn’t understand. The one who is too impulsive, and puts everyone is danger. The one who can never listen to what anyone says, and gets people injured. 

He is the one who shouldn’t be on the team. 

After another twenty minutes of the fictional space war unfolding on the screen before him, Keith silently unfolds his limbs and stands upright before turning towards the door. He eases it open and slips through the small crack created before hesitating for a few seconds, as if waiting for one of the others to call out to him and ask him to stay. 

But the room remains silent, and the soft noise of the door clicking in place as he exits the room goes unnoticed by the other Paladins of Voltron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from: "one foot" by walk the moon


	2. my head is stripped (just like a screw that's been tightened too many times)

Theoretically, he would train with the others and hone in his skills at a steady pace. One that was healthy, and allowed him to slowly perfect his craft over time. 

Instead, Keith found himself on the training deck whenever he could, fighting off training bots at a steady pace until he would collapse onto the floor and stop breathing. The machines would hit him with their staffs a few times before he would call the order for the training sequence to end, leaving his body littered with blisters, burns, and bruises that never seemed to disappear. His binder would always constrict his chest until he felt his ribs bending under the pressure, the rich purple bruises borne of broken blood vessels littering his chest every time he took it off to shower. 

But he still wasn’t good enough to defend his teammates from the enemies they faced. 

It was always Keith who failed to block a shot that rocked the green lion, leaving Pidge with a heavy concussion and bruised ribs. Whose aim was off and hit Hunk in his lower right thigh when they were on the ground of some planet whose name he had long forgotten, leaving him with a burn scar that decorated his skin with a nasty burgundy hue. Who punched Lance too hard in training, giving him a black eye that didn’t fade for over a month. Whose lion wasn’t quick enough to stop the ship from ramming the black lion, leaving Shiro with a broken arm and a bruised spinal cord. 

So he trained through all of the levels, pushing himself to get better until he stopped failing the universe in every way that he could. Whenever he reached the end of the programming, he would find Coran in some forgotten corner of the castle and request him to rework it to be more difficult and challenging than any of them could handle. 

It was exhausting, and left him near dead on multiple occasions, but at least it meant that he wasn’t a complete failure. At least in this way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from: "the last of the real ones" by fall out boy


	3. i'll do it 'til the sun goes down (and all through the night time)

The others never questioned why he didn’t show up to breakfast, or lunch, or any of the random activities that centered around food that would spring up out of nowhere. He was labeled as the loner long ago, assumed to enjoy being alone and separate from everyone else. As long as he showed up to dinner, they never bat an eye at his lack of attendance at meals. 

After all, they assumed that Keith ate at times when it was beneficial to him, and his schedule. 

And that was why he only showed up to dinner, for it was the lack of calories and clawing hunger that made his headache when he was awake that kept him going. It was a motivation of sorts, to only eat once a day. It became a reward on the good days, and another mistake on the bad ones, and vomit in the toilet in his worst moments. 

It kept him small enough that he could fit through the cracks better than Pidge could, lean enough that he could dodge almost any attack. The only thing on his bones were the muscles that refused to abandon him due to his nonstop exercise regiment that never ended, even when he was asleep. 

Every once in awhile, Lance would poke him in the ribs and remark that he was gaining weight on his figure whenever they had a particularly bad fight. If it was meant to be a joke, it never came across that way. It was simply motivation to eat more vegetables, and feed the carb-laden bread to the mice whenever they crawled about his feet. 

Sometimes, he would get lucky when they went on an extended mission, and he wouldn’t eat for days at a time. It sharpened his focus, and made him delirious with pain to the point that the adrenaline pumping through his system was more accurate in aim that he could ever hope to be otherwise. If he blacked out for a few seconds, or minutes, he didn’t have to worry because the red lion would take over the controls and guide him to a safer part of the fight until he regained consciousness, taking down dozens of enemy ships along the way. 

No one ever caught him slipping his fingers around his wrist, where the tip of his thumb could wrap around the second knuckle of his middle finger most days. He would squeeze tight, feel his bones shift out of place, before releasing his grip and examining the bruises that had appeared before tightening his gloves and going back to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from: "unstoppable" by sia


	4. lay your weary head to rest (don't you cry no more)

It wasn’t until Lance banged heavily on his door one night that he realized that the others could hear him when he screamed during his nightmares. 

Eyes squeezed tightly shut, he ran his fingers through his hair until they brushed the ends of his mullet. Grabbing onto the split ends tightly, he yanked hard until his breathing came back under control. When Keith opened his eyes, everything around him was fuzzy and out-of-focus. He stumbled as he climbed out of his bed, his limbs heavy and weightless at the same time. Lance’s pounding vibrated through the wall as he scrambled for a hold, swaying on his feet. 

“What do you need, Lance?” Everything around him seemed muffled as his fingers found his jacket on the floor by his feet, the red and yellow fabric shocking his senses as he slipped it around his shoulders. It wasn’t until the warm fabric surrounded him that he realized he was freezing. 

“I need you to either stop screaming at all hours of the night, or tell me what’s going on so I can somehow fix this mess of yours.” He had stopped pounding on the door, but the vibrations of the pounding left a dull ringing in Keith’s ears as he shook his head slightly and began pacing the room. 

“It’s nothing that you need to concern yourself with. It won’t happen again.” Keith silently toed on his boots and grabbed his knife, slipping it into the sheath on the back of his belt. The air around him was stifling, choking whatever remained of oxygen in his lungs. 

“It’d better not. After all, some of us are trying to sleep.” Lance fell silent on the other side of the door as Keith rested his forehead on the wall, the cool metal slowly bringing his burning body temperature down. He could feel himself shaking as he waited for Lance’s footsteps to retreat. 

“But, seriously, man. This screaming? If it doesn’t get better, you need to talk to us.” There was a trace of hesitation in Lance’s tone that infected the atmosphere as Keith bit his lip and felt sharp copper stain his tongue. It was almost as if Lance was waiting for him to say something, but no matter how hard he tried to form the words and worries swirling around in his brain, Keith’s mouth wouldn’t vocalize any of his thoughts. 

Several minutes passed before Lance left, his footsteps echoing down the hallway of the castle. Keith waited until he heard Lance’s door open and close before slipping out of his room and down the many corridors of the castle. He wandered for most of the night until he found an abandoned room several floors away from the resting places of the rest of the paladins, and laid down on the floor of his new bedroom. 

If no one could find him, then no one could hear him scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from: "carry on my wayward son" by kansas


	5. to the soldier, the civilian, the martyr, the victim (this is war)

It was near the end of the battle when Keith turned the tide of the encounter south. 

Haggar’s newest creature was closest in appearance to the dragons fantasy lores often revolved around. It’s shimmering scales and blue fire had decimated the towns of the planet, leaving many civilians without a home or their families. Voltron had appeared whilst it was devouring one of the planet’s inhabitants, their legs sticking out of its mouth as blood dripped down its chin. Hunk had shot at its head with the shoulder cannon, leaving a large burn across the side of its face and effectively blinding it in one eye before it roared and began chasing them. 

Now, several hours later, they had almost worn the creature down completely. Gashes littered its body and leaked purple blood as it flew around the sky of the town, the holes in its wings messing with its flight trajectory as Voltron danced in circles around it. If they could get it to land away from the civilians, they could save as many people as possible while still ending the fight. 

Keith’s fingers were twitching on the controls as Shiro shouted out commands over the coms. Near the creature's head was a large gash in its neck which was oozing blood, and he knew that if he got in a good hit the fight would be over. Lowering his right hand to his waist, he conjured up his bayard and held it over the control panel, waiting for the right moment to strike. 

Moments later, it arrived when the creature reared its head behind them and attempted to bite at Voltron’s torso. Keith jammed his bayard into the slot and summoned the sword, blocking out the screams of the other Paladins as he jammed the blade into its neck, blood splattering around his windshield. 

The creature, perished, fell onto the town. 

Four hundred and fifty-six civilians. Dead. Because of him. 

Static clouded his mind as they debriefed, the lectures from all of the others swirling together in his mind as his mistake overwhelmed his senses. He knew that he had messed up. He knew that he had made the wrong call. He knew that he needed to be better. 

Once things had calmed down, and everyone left to different sections of the castle, Keith found himself in the bathroom with trails of scalding hot water trailing down his back. Steam was rising in small, smoky tendrils around his body as his fingernails trailed down his spine leaving long, raised red lines in their wake. He tilted his head upwards and felt the water burn his neck as he pressed his knuckles deep into the new bruises fresh from the battle. 

Several hours later, he awoke with his head in a puddle of freezing water, the slime of the shower floor clogging his pores. Keith’s cheek was clogging the drain, preventing the water from fully draining. He shifted his cheek, and heard the whoosh of water sliding down the pipes overtake his senses as he fell unconscious once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title taken from: "this is war" by thirty seconds to mars


	6. this is the scent of dead skin on a linoleum floor (and it sure as hell ain't normal but we deal, we deal)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy twelfth birthday to "a fever you can't sweat out" by panic! at the disco.

He had been sitting on the observation deck, watching the stars slowly drift by when he heard the low woosh of the doors behind him followed by heavy footsteps vibrating against the smooth floors. The scent of chocolate floated through the air and permeated his senses as his stomach rolled upwards into his throat. Keith closed his eyes tight enough to fill his head with constellations as Hunk approached him from behind, stopping to sit next to him with a tray of what appeared to be some sort of red velvet concoction. 

“I, uh, thought I might be able to find you up here. I don’t know, I just noticed that you didn’t make it to dinner today, and I wanted to make sure to, like, make sure you didn’t feel like we didn’t notice or something? I just, um, I brought you something new. You get to try it first. If you want of course! Oh god, what I am saying.” Anxious laughter was bubbling out of Hunk’s chest through the small smile adorning his face as he thrust the tray towards Keith’s chest. 

Time passed, several seconds too long, before he unwrapped one of his arms from where it had been curled around his spine and Keith grabbed one of the small cakes. 

He took a small bite, scraping off the edge of the pastry as he felt the dyed cake enter his mouth. The explosion of chocolate and sugar, butter and vanilla was orgasmic. Keith stifled a moan of satisfaction as he took another bite, and another, and another until the small pastry had vanished from in between his skeleton fingers into his stomach. Time fractured into forgotten milliseconds as Hunk sat the tray down between them and grabbed a cake for himself as Keith took one in each hand and ate them so quickly that he forget their taste. 

It was only when the crimson crumbs fell onto the denim of his black skinny jeans that he realized what he had done. 

Three red velvet cakes. Three pastries. Three desserts after a whole day of fasting that his body would absorb completely and never release again. 

He had fucked up again. And he - his throat was closing in as he calculated the calories in his head and anxiously ran his hands up and down his legs, feeling nothing but dread. Keith stared down at his thighs as Hunk rambled on about a new game he and Pidge were making that was similar to Monopoly. All he could notice was how, well, _big_ his thighs were, splayed out on the observation deck inches past healthy. 

Hunk was standing up now, saying something about Allura asking him to help with a malfunction in the lions. He stretched wide, shirt lifting up to reveal his waist before he bent over to pick up the reflective tray, now half-empty and glaring into Keith’s soul. Keith mumbled a “thank you” and “goodbye” as Hunk left the observation deck with an upbeat hum in his heart and enthusiasm in his mind. 

Keith was on his feet the second the doors closed behind him, gloved hand over his mouth as bile rose in his throat and threatened to spill out of his blue-purple lips. He felt the bones - no, the _fat_ \- of his fingers digging deep into the skin of his face as the putrid liquid began to seep out of his mouth. Sprinting faster, he ran through the corridors of the castle at a pace which left him winded and on the verge of passing out. Banging the door to the bathroom open, he fell to his knees in front of the toilet. 

The thin fabric covering his legs dug into his skin as the frozen tiles crawled inside of his veins. Keith’s hair was falling over his eyes as vomit splashed into the bowl of the toilet, red swirling with creamy whites until it formed an ugly color which painted the entirety of the white porcelain. His bones were shaking, cracking, fracturing as the last of the contents of his stomach ejected themselves from his body. Red saliva coated his chin as his forehead collapsed onto the edge of the rim, before his strength gave out and he fell onto the floor. 

His vision blurred as he began dragging himself across the floor, managing an inch or two every minute. Reaching the door, Keith pushed it the rest of the way closed before extending his arm as far as he could in order to lock it. Once he is secured inside the small room, he breaks. 

Sobs bounce around him as he pulls his jacket tight against his heaving chest, Keith’s shaking body pulling him into the unsettling state that comes into being when you hover between consciousness and unconsciousness, living and dying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, two months ago: maybe i'm finally starting to recover from my eating disorder!  
> me, now: six hundred calories in a day? too much. 
> 
> anyways, i'm going to try to update this about once a week if i can manage. there was the big chapter dump at the beginning because i wrote the first few chapters in advance, but then i got anxious and wanted to post something, and ahhhh. but, yeah. i hope everyone is having a good day. 
> 
> chapter title taken from: "camisado" by panic! at the disco

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @hidefromeveryone 
> 
> work title taken from: "the five of us are dying" by my chemical romance


End file.
